


In the Arms of Stardust

by savanting



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Hurt, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey Needs A Hug, the aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25519564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savanting/pseuds/savanting
Summary: Rey searches throughout the expanse of the Force for the man she was doomed to love. One-Shot.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	In the Arms of Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Star Wars or its characters. This is for everyone who saw the last few minutes of TROS and thought, "Who is this Rey, and why does she seem so okay after everything that happened to her? AND WHERE IS BEN SOLO'S FORCE GHOST???" #nevergonnagetoverit

The Force was not a tool to be used like a weapon, Rey had long ago learned, yet she found herself searching through its strands every night when she was alone in her bed. It was like separating stray threads that had become tangled from misuse; she wasn’t a seamstress, not by any means, but she could imagine how tedious the process could be of weaving thread into fabric.

But she was not looking to make something: she wanted to _find_ something -- _someone_. No matter how long she searched, though, she could not find the spark of energy she would recognize as the other piece of her that had been missing for months. And every night she came away without answers, without meaning, while tears rimmed her eyes.

Ben Solo had once only been a thought away, but now he was lost in an ether of movement and static. It was like standing in a screaming crowd and trying to locate someone whispering a string of words she could never hope to hear. And it made her heart hurt, knowing he was out there, alone, locked away like a creature in chains. Even the Force could punish people for their crimes; it was probably worse than a post-war tribunal would have been.

The ghosts of Luke and Leia were even salt to her wounds because they came without asking, free to step into her reality as if they had special invitations. They thought she still needed a teacher to look over her, but she had never gotten the answers she needed to know: whenever she asked if they could sense Ben, they would fall into eerie silence as if they truly were just phantoms left to haunt her all her days.

Last Jedi or not, Rey was not feeling very magnanimous towards the masters of the past, no matter who they were. She also was not too keen on the fact that they had used her body as the conduit for bringing down the Sith once and for all. She was so much more than a puppet whose purpose ended as soon as the dance was over.

And, no matter how she pleaded with the ghosts of Luke and Leia, they would not tell her what had happened after that final battle. Why Ben had disappeared, his body fading out of reality, and why he had not resurfaced as a ghost like most Force users of the past.

There were just too many nights where she closed her eyes, focused on the buzz of energy swirling around her, and reached out to find nothing except empty space. The galaxy was her map, the constellations her guiding points, but it was no use since she felt blind and clumsy in her search. And every night ended with frustration, her teeth aching from gritting them too hard, where her eyes would fly open and she would punch her pillow until her knuckles burned.

Yet the Force still hummed, waiting and watching, as if she were just a child throwing a tantrum. It did not care that she missed and longed and cried. It did not care that she thought it was unfair that, for once in her life, she had felt understood, only for her confidante to be snatched away once he had poured his life force into her. The Force did not care about Ben Solo, and it certainly had proven that it did not care a whit about Rey either.

Luke had been right in that regard: it was vanity for any Jedi to think the Force was a thing to be possessed. The Force was no pet; it was an animal that could not be tamed into submission.

Rey had learned all these things, yet the truth did not make the sear of hurt sting any less.

Still she continued her nighttime meditation, searching, just searching, her mind restless until the early morning hours. Then she would fall into a dreamless sleep that left her no more helped or satisfied than when she started.

This cycle continued without end until one night she felt the hint of something, just barely beyond her stretch of reach. It was a familiar glow, like a burst of heat in a cold room, but she couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. Even though Rey knew better than to hope, she continued to circle the energy in her outreach. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead, the strain causing a physical tax on her body. Just a little more and she could--

It was like a band snapping back in place, and she hit her head against the wall behind her bed, effectively ending whatever progress she had made in her galaxy-wide quest through the Force. She rubbed the sore spot, but her eyes blazed with purpose: if only she could find that point again in her mind, then maybe she would know what had truly happened to Ben Solo.

Every night was another test in her concentration. The point of energy still beckoned, like a torch in the night. But every single effort brought her little closer to reaching it, knowing it, using it as a clue to find the other half to herself. The hollow space inside her was easier to ignore during her exercises to train her mind to navigate through the Force and all its different incarnations throughout the galaxy.

It was also easy to imagine the energy she felt into the shape of a person. Wishful thinking it may have been, but each time she could just picture his expression, the lines of his body, the fall of his dark hair, the smile pressed against her mouth--

It was a cruel thing to do to herself, but she _ached_. Being a part of a dyad that had split in half was what she imagined having a phantom limb was like. When a piece of you had disappeared, wasn’t the only logical thing to do to go in search of something to fill that emptiness?

Sometimes she could even imagine that his arms had wrapped around her, to cocoon her away from all the worst of the galaxy. The war was still a recent memory, so fresh that the wounds had not even had time to become scars, and the thought that he was still out there, waiting to be found, was a good distraction from the council meetings that had no need of a scavenger-turned-Jedi who had no idea how government actually worked. Rey was just an empty seat to fill in a room that had no use for her except what she could do with the Force.

Closing her eyes at night and just feeling brought peace in a way she could not have during waking hours. No matter how Finn or Poe looked at her with concern, she couldn’t say the words aloud. To them, Ben Solo had just been an insurgent, a terrorist, the catalyst of so many tragedies. But...

_I miss him._

They hadn’t realized the depth of it, how close the Force had entwined them, till her breath was just another measure of his. Even Finn, who could sense things in ways only Force users did, didn’t realize. Besides, Rey had pushed a smile to her face too many times for anyone to recognize what lay beneath the mask she wore. Even her one trip to Tatooine to lay the Skywalker lightsabers to rest had been under the pretense that she could feel if Ben Solo’s ghost were waiting for her there within the dunes.

It had been an empty journey. Only Luke and Leia had watched over her, their smiles encouraging, even though all she wanted to do was ask, _Where is he? Why won’t he come to me? Why did we have to end before we had even begun?_

But no. She wore the smile, went through the medal ceremony to be congratulated for her services in the war, and lay alone at night on a quest to find what had been stolen from her.

 _He wasn’t yours to keep,_ the Force may as well have told her. _He belonged to a force greater than yourself._

But the last Jedi would not take that answer without fighting. She would find him.

The Force breathed around her, yet Rey would not rest.

Ben Solo would come back to her arms, even if she had to raze the galaxy to feel the relief of knowing she could be healed and loved and cherished.

Rey had to believe that.


End file.
